Brody

George Broderson had been with the Alvin group since just about day one. He was Alvin’s crew chief and directed all the maintenance on the sub. After a long career he retired at age 65. His last trip at sea was the one just before he was hired so I never got to sail with him. Depending on who you talked to, I either missed out on a great and rare experience or was one luck S.O.B.

He was pretty strict when it came to dealing with just about everyone. He wasn’t out to be your friend if you were in a position subordinate to him. When we went into my first overhaul he was hired back as a casual employee to do all the fiberglass work and painting on the sub. He had a shop set up in the back of the warehouse.

One beautiful spring day, a Saturday I think, we had the High Bay door open while we were working on the sub. We got the word that a tour was coming through that morning. This was fairly common as Alvin has always been popular with the public. This day it was the M.I.T. class of 1950 something and their spouses. About 60 people who would be escorted by some one from the public affairs office, or The Ministry of Disinformation as we called them. Some of these tour guides were notorious for their blatant ignorance of the subject they were expounding on.

Just prior to them showing up, Brody had brought down a batch of skins for the sub that he had just finished painting in a 2 part epoxy paint. He set them up leaning against the loading dock to sit in the sun. The tour group showed up on schedule and the tour guide started to give a talk about the sub and was pointing out various parts about the High Bay. While this was going on a woman in her late 50’s separated from the group and wandered over to the freshly painted skins and began to poke at on with her finger. Brody politely stepped up and said “excuse my madam but please don’t do that. I just painted those and they’re still wet”. “They don’t look wet” she replied wile continuing to poke at the paint. This got Brody to change his tone and say “Lady, they’re soft, just like your fucking head!” The woman, quite startled didn’t say a word as she shuffled back into the crowd.  This was typical of Brody's tact. She was lucky to get the first, polite request.